The present invention relates to a musical performance training apparatus which communicates with musical instruments and sends them music data for musical performance training, and to a recording medium having a musical performance training program stored thereon.
Musical instruments are known which have a musical navigation function (called navigator) for guiding a user (player) to play musical notes for performance training. An electronic keyboard instrument with such a navigator, for instance, employs a plurality of light emitting elements (e.g., LEDs) disposed in respective keys of a musical keyboard. The navigator controls the light emitting elements to turn on or off according to music data of a musical part to be played by a user (player) for performance training, thus notifying the player of a key or keys to be operated. Music data used by the navigator may be supplied by an interval storage, such as ROM, for storing the music data. MIDI-controlled musical instruments can receive MIDI-formatted music data from an external apparatus or storage and use them for musical navigation.
The use of an external source of music data by MIDI or any other suitable communication provides a wide variety of music to the navigator. Source music data may include chord notes. In general, chord notes are played at the same time. Unfortunately, chord notes included in the source music data can have a time difference from one another. In this case, the prior art music navigator turns on respective chord note key light emitting elements with a corresponding time difference since the navigator operates according to the source or supplied music data. As a result, a user or player finds it very hard to play the chord notes at the same time.
The prior art music performance apparatus uses music data including a plurality of musical parts (melody, chord, base, rhythm part etc.) as follows. For a musical part (e.g., melody) to be played by a user for performance training, the navigator controls key light emitting elements to turn on at their respective play (note-on) timings. For other musical parts, the navigator plays as background music players i.e., automatically performs the other musical parts by generating notes at their respective play (note-on) timings. As a result, automatic performance of the other musical parts proceeds in synchronism with the light navigation of the musical part for performance training.
This arrangement, however, introduces a delayed key-operation response of the user since the user may first recognize a key which is lit up and then operate it with a delay relative to automatic performance.
To overcome the delayed response problem, a music performance training apparatus is proposed which uses an internal music buffer storage for storing music data covering a complete music piece and reads from the storage musical parts for automatic performance with a predetermined time delay relative to reading of the musical part for performance training.
The proposed apparatus has the disadvantages that it requires storage capacity of storing the whole music piece data and complicated processing.
MIDI-formatted music data includes musical part information (in the form of MIDI channel number) for respective note data (not on/off event data). Thus, the prior art music performance training apparatus using such music data transmits note data with a corresponding MIDI output channel to a MIDI-controlled musical instrument with a navigator. A typical MIDI-controlled musical instrument with the navigator uses note data with a specific and fixed input channel for musical navigation by controlling key light emitting elements according to such note data. As a result, a user cannot easily select or change a musical part for musical navigation i.e., the one to be practiced by the user for performance training.
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide an apparatus for musical performance training capable of guiding a user to play chord notes at the same time even if source or read chord note data include chord notes with a time difference from one another.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention, there is provided an apparatus for musical performance training, comprising:
reading means for sequentially reading a succession of note data;
transmitting means for transmitting performance training data to a musical instrument connected to the apparatus based on the read note data;
detecting means for detecting a time difference between a note-on time of first note data read by said reading means and a note-on time of subsequent note data read by said reading means; and
controlling means for determining chord notes to be played simultaneously from the first and subsequent note data when the detected time difference is smaller than a predetermined value and for controlling said transmitting means to simultaneously transmit a plurality of the performance training data based on the first and subsequent note data in response to said determining.
With this arrangement, a user an easily play chord notes at the same time even if the source music data include chord notes with a time difference from one another.
Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for musical performance training capable of guiding a user to play a musical part for performance training in time-agreement with automatic performance of other musical parts, without requiring additional storage capacity or complicated processing.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is provided an apparatus for musical performance training, comprising:
reading means for sequentially reading a succession of note data including a plurality of musical parts;
transmitting means for transmitting said read note data of a musical part for performance training to a musical instrument connected to the apparatus and for transmitting said read note data of a musical part for automatic performance to the musical instrument; and
controlling means for controlling said reading means to read, in advance, respective note data of the musical part for performance training before their respective note-on timings and for controlling said reading means to read respective note data of the musical part for automatic performance at their respective note-on timings.
With this arrangement, a user can easily play a musical performance training part in time-agreement with the automatic performance of other musical parts. The arrangement does not need additional storage capacity or complicated processing.
A further object of the invention is to provide an apparatus for musical performance training capable of selecting or changing a musical part for musical performance training.
In accordance with a further aspect of the invention, there is provided an apparatus for musical performance training, comprising:
reading means for sequentially reading music data including a plurality of musical parts;
transmitting means having a plurality of output channels for transmitting the read music data to a musical instrument having a plurality of input channels corresponding to the plurality of the output channels in such a manner that each output channel carries a different one of the plurality of musical parts of the music data;
selecting means for selecting one of the plurality of musical parts of the music data, as musical part for performance training; and
assigning means for assigning the selected musical part to one of the output channels corresponding to one of the input channels preselected for performance training.
With this arrangement, a user can easily choose a desired one of a plurality of musical parts as the one for performance training.
The invention can also be applied to a recording medium storing a computer-readable, musical performance training program.